Sunday, February 09, 2014

TOM BREVOORT JUST HAD HIS BUBBLE BURST

as a muslim reader who has enjoyed plenty of marvel work in the past (i am one of the few who liked FEAR ITSELF), i must say this MS. MARVEL book comes across really quite offensive in some of it's, shall we say, misunderstanding generalisations and what comes across as being the very bare minimum of knowledge of it's only "niche". alternatively faiza hussain from CAPTAIN BRITAIN AND MI:13 was a great muslim heroine without relying on that as her only defining aspect.

I wonder if he's saying that just because the near replacement for Capt. Britain wore a burka? Of course, even that book has what can turn off some hardcore Muslims: as noted before, Hussain rolled up her sleeves while playing sports!

All that aside, this proves that there are Muslims out there who'll disapprove of how they're doing things no matter how devout a Muslim convert G. Willow Wilson is herself, and won't go out of their way to read it either. Brevoort's reply was:

Sorry you didn’t care for it. But given that the writer and the editor both share aspects of the character’s backstory, I think the material you’re reacting to as being an ill-informed generalization is really specific storytelling decisions that are being made on their part.

Has it occurred to him that there's Muslims out there (who, despite what they say, might not be very keen on reading the output of companies formed by Jews) who'll detest the story no matter how "devout" it's POV of Islam is, and won't even be satisfied that it's a propaganda piece meant to mislead unsuspecting "infidels"? Maybe now it will.

As expected, quite a few news sites, for comics and other issues, have taken some of the most gushing stances you could expect on this. At the Washington Post, one writer, who's of Pakistani descent, gave it a utterly predictable fawn of a review, and also tells that:

With that same wry humor, Wilson touches on the stereotypes that many Muslim women and girls deal with on a regular basis. “Your headscarf is so pretty, Kiki,” a well-meaning but culturally uneducated character says to one of Kamala’s friends. “But…nobody pressured you to start wearing it, right? Nobody’s going to, like, honor-kill you?”

I don't think that's funny at all. Never mind it's obviously their way of fitting in an excuse to say non-Muslims are uninformed, it's very disgusting to make light of the issue of honor murders and make jokes about it. Wilson's doing more bad for Muslim women than good with bottom of the barrel humor like that. Also, I took a look at CBR's forum thread for this book, and while a lot of the replies were predictably gushy, there was one that stood out:

Does it have to be this one sided though? It is portrayed as the Muslims are the good guys and the white people are so obnoxious.

I guess that was expected too. Interestingly enough, the book does contain at least one odd element that must've turned off Brevoort's caller, and doubtless will irk other devout Muslims too:

...Kamala’s unseemly interest in bacon on page one (“delicious, delicious infidel meat”) through to her Avengers/My Little Pony fanfic (which has almost 1000 upvotes on freakingcool.com) to her explanation that she wants to be just like Carol Danvers, “except I would wear the classic, politically incorrect costume and kick butt in giant wedge heels.”

Very facinating. I can see now why there will be Islamists who won't like it: despite Wilson's otherwise positive depiction of Islam in this book, she's clearly trying to devise a pretend act that Muslims aren't that stringent about non-halal food (and even implies Khan would like to wear Carol Danvers's most famous costume design), and for hardcore Islamists, that's simply haram (forbidden). Simultaneously, she puts in the word "infidel", which is like saying that non-Muslims are outsiders.

I believe Brevoort has just learned an interesting lesson that, despite what he's surely hoping, there are Muslims out there who will and do detest the book because it just doesn't live up to their most devout beliefs, and because they simply don't like the idea of a woman as a story lead. So he'd better not expect it to be the runaway success I'm sure he wants it to be, for all the wrong reasons.